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92nd Giro d'Italia - GT

Italy, May 9-31, 2009

Stage 18 - Thursday, May 28: Sulmona - Benevento, 182km

Complete live report

13:58 CEST
Good afternoon and welcome back! Today we have another of those transitional stages, designed to lull the weary legs into thinking there is something in Italy besides just mountains. There is one climb close to the beginning, but from there on the course just sort of undulates towards the southeast and the expected mass sprint finish in Benevento.

14:01 CEST 43km/139km to go
Here's an update on what is happening in the race: everyone is all together.

14:04 CEST
We got underway two minutes late, at 12:52. Gilberto Simoni tried an attack right off the bat, at km 3, but the group caught him.

14:06 CEST
The stage opened with an almost immediate climb to the day's one and only ranked climb, Plano della Cinque Miglia. It is a Category Two climb coming only 22 km into the day. It has an average gradient of 4.6% and a max of 9%.

14:08 CEST
On the ascent, the field broke into two large groups, separated by only 40 seconds. They are all came back together again, though.

We had another escape group trying to get away. It was Philip Deignan (Cervelo), Danny Pate (Garmin-Slipstream), Dmytro Grabovskyy (ISD), and Manuel Quinziato (Liquigas). They had a lead of seven seconds before being caught again by the field.

14:10 CEST 53km/129km to go
And another never-say-die rider is off again: Michele Scarponi of Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni. And just as quickly, he is joined by 20 other riders. They have 20 seconds now on the peloton.

14:13 CEST
The stage started today in Culmona, best known as the birthplace of Ovid. It is also famous for its sugared almonds, called confetti.

14:16 CEST
What will it be today? Will a break group get away, and who will be in it? Will it come through, or will the sprinters have their final chance? Talk about it in our forum.

14:18 CEST
Jackson Rodriguez of Diquigiovanni crashed, but is back up and going again.

14:21 CEST 58km/124km to go
Four riders have broken out of that group, including Scarponi. He has been joined by Yaroslav Popovych (Astana), Danny Pate (Garmin), and Gabriele Bosisio (LPR). They have a 22 second lead over the chasing group, with the peloton nine seconds behind them.

14:22 CEST
Let's change that to make the peloton, including the maglia rosa, 31 seconds behind the chasing group of 16.

14:26 CEST 55km/127km to go
Grabovskyy jumps out of the chasing group and joins the quartet in front, making it now a quintet.

14:30 CEST
The road today is never particularly flat, but it's the last chance the sprinters will have, so we look for a long escape caught up again at the last minute, with a mass sprint to follow. Of course, the sprint could be interesting since there are very few sprinters left in the race.

14:40 CEST 74km/108km to go
The lead has jumped to 2:20, and Rabobank is leading the chasing peloton.

14:44 CEST
We are in the province of Isernia at the moment, which can brag about some ancient history. An area called Pineta is considered to be the most ancient site where traces of the use of fire by man have been found.

14:47 CEST 80km/102km to go
And the gap is now up to 3:05. Is this the group of the day, or is it too large?

14:51 CEST
It's hard to find comments on what to expect today, as most of the riders are still recovering from yesterday's Blockhaus climb and looking towards tomorrow volcano experience. Franco Pellizotti was happy enough with his win yesterday, calling it “a very important stage, a very strange stage, like Plan de Corones stage last year."

14:52 CEST 83km/99km to go
This group is moving -- it has now built up a lead of 3:45.

14:56 CEST
The Giro hasn't quite gone the way Team Liquigas has hoped. According to Pellizotti, "Ivan (Basso) and I started with the idea to win the Giro. We have shown strong, even if we are not winning the race, and so this stage win is something for the team."

15:00 CEST
Who has the advantage in this group? If we count correctly (and we probably don't), then Columbia, Garmin, Astana, Diquigiovanni, ISD, Quick Step and Saxo Bank all have two riders there.

15:09 CEST
The highest-ranked rider in the group is Popovych. He is 14th overall, but 16:43 back.

15:13 CEST
Second-place Danilo Di Luca put in some time on first-placed Denis Menchov yesterday, and is happy with that. "I was able to see Menchov's face, not necessarily his pedalling, and I could see for the first time that he was suffering. I delivered a little bit, but it was not enough," he said.

15:17 CEST
Popovych was in another long break this week. In Monday's stage 16, he was in a 20 rider group which got away at 20km. He stayed away the longest of them all and for a while it looked like he had good chances to go for the win. But Carlos Sastre flew by him on the ascent with only about two km to go. The discouraged Ukranian came in at 3:21 down.

15:21 CEST 101km/81km to go
The gap had grown to five minutes, but after passing through the feed zone, it has dropped to 4:45.

15:22 CEST
What happened to the summer sun that baked the peloton for so many stages? The lead group has run into rain!

15:25 CEST
The peloton doesn't seem to be working too hard. They are all grouped together, taking up the whole road. Stefano Garzelli and Danilo Di Luca are having a little chat. Maybe talking about yesterday's finale?

15:26 CEST
Stefano Garzelli went up the last few kms of the Blockhaus with Danilo Di Luca, Denis Menchov and Ivan Basso, and at the end he committed a cardinal sin in the eyes of many fans: he outsprinted Di Luca for second place, snatching away valuable bonus seconds from Di Luca. Garzelli was booed and whistled at by the LPR Brakes rider's fans.

"I ride my own race,” Garzelli explained. "I don't see why I should let Di Luca go by me. We don't ride for the same team."

15:28 CEST
There are a number of Milram riders up near the front of the peloton, with the cow-fleck jerseys mixing in with the Rabobank blue and orange.

15:29 CEST
Cervelo's Volodymir Gustov has quite a bit of gauze and adhesive tape decorating his left shin.

15:31 CEST
Here is our daily look at who is leading what category: Denis Menchov is leading the GC ranking, 26 seconds ahead of Danilo Di Luca and exactly two minutes ahead of Franco Pellizotti. Di Luca leads the points race, ahead of Menchov and Pellizotti. Only one of those three names pops up in the mountain classification: Di Luca, who is third behind Andriy Grivko and leader Stefano Garzelli.

15:35 CEST
Columbia-Highroad has two of its bigger names in the chase group. Siutsou of course won a stage this year, stage eight going into Bergamo. Lövkvist wore the best young rider's jersey for much of the rest, before falling apart on Monday's stage.

15:37 CEST
Lövkvist not only wore the white jersey, but also spent some time in the pink leader's jersey. He won it after stage four and wore it for only one day.

15:39 CEST 115km/67km to go
The gap just keeps on growing, it is now up to 6:15.

15:40 CEST
Here are some more leaders: Best young rider is Kevin Seeldraeyers of Quick Step. Giovanni Visconti leads the T.V. (intermediate sprint) rankings. And Garzelli is at the top of the most combative list. Di Luca leads the Azzurri d'Italia classification. Mauro Facci heads up the Trofeo Fuga Cervelo.

15:42 CEST
Also in the lead group is the man who took the best young rider honours away from Lövkvist.
Kevin Seeldraeyers of Quick Step has had a big week. Not only did he take over the white jersey, he also proposed to his girlfriend. And she accepted! Our congratulations to the young couple.

15:44 CEST
A number of teams are working with Rabobank to try and pull the group back: Milram, Caisse d'Epargne, AG2R, among others.

15:46 CEST
An ISD rider, Dario Cioni, falls back and signals for help One new rear wheel and he is on his way again.

15:51 CEST
Over in the Bayern-Rundfahrt, Marcus Eibegger of Elk Haus has won today's stage, ahead of his teammate Stefan Denifl and Milram's Linus Gerdemann.

15:52 CEST 132km/50km to go
50km to go, and the group has a lead of just about five minutes.

15:58 CEST
The peloton has picked up the pace and is now spreading out single file. Fuji, who has no one in the lead group, has joined in the chase work.

16:00 CEST 131.7km/50.3km to go
Astana moves up to do its part in the lead work.

16:03 CEST
Cervelo's Deignan is at the race doctor's car, getting some bandages put on his left fingers. We don't know if these are injuries left over from yesterday or whether he has gone down again today.

16:05 CEST
The gaps now down to exactly five minutes. Will the group make it? Or will one or two of the riders get through?

16:07 CEST
The stage in the Tour of Belgium is over. Borut Bozic of Vacansoleil won the second stage ahead of Alberto Ongarato (LPR) and Graeme Brown (Rabobank). He also took over the race lead.

16:08 CEST
The peloton is really tearing along now, single file and many of them up off their saddles.

16:09 CEST 143.6km/38.4km to go
Is the lead group starting to get nervous? We haven't had a time check lately...

16:12 CEST 141,4km/41km to go
The lead group approaches the T.V. intermediate sprint in Telese Terme, Actually they have just gone through it and we are waiting to hear the winner's name.

The gap is down to 4:30.

16:13 CEST 147km/35km to go
35km to go. This is going to be a close one.

16:15 CEST
To recap, we have our large breakaway which several of the players in the minor competitions have been sure to make.

16:17 CEST
We see Seeldraeyers in this move, which also contains his main contender in the young rider competition, Masciarelli.

Visconti padded his lead in the T.V. classification with that sprint. He leads over Facci of Quick Step who is not in this move.

16:19 CEST
The Fuga Cervelo classification is the competition which measures how many kilometres each rider has spent in breakaways. Currently Facci leads that classification, but Visconti is closing in on him by making todays' move.

16:21 CEST 152km/30km to go
30 kilometres to go and the break has 3'50... normally a break needs about one minute per 10km in order to have a chance at succeeding, so this will be quite close.

16:22 CEST
The lead group is still rotating smoothly in a perfect paceline. They're going to need to continue to cooperate if they stand a chance of contesting the stage win. One of the fastest men in the break is Julian Dean (Garmin-Slipstream).

16:24 CEST
Today's average speed has been quite high - 43.6km/h - which is incredible considering this is the tail end of a three week stage race.

16:26 CEST
We see Ivan Basso riding along in the peloton looking like this rapid pace isn't exactly agreeing with him. The chase is on medium-high ride now and legs are starting to cook.

16:26 CEST
The peloton is not completely single file, but the first 50 or so riders are lined out, and then the tail end is spread across the road a bit.

16:27 CEST 157km/25km to go
Up in the break we can see the mountains receding in the distance as they head toward Benevento. Only 25km to go!

16:28 CEST
It was 3'18 at the last check 5km ago for our gigantic breakaway, now it's down to 3'00. Nobody is threatening the overall classification, but there are teams which have still to win a stage and have an interest in bringing the break back.

16:29 CEST
Seeldraeyers is keeping a close eye on Masciarelli, making sure he can't attack and get any time on him in that young rider classification. But at speeds like this, nobody is attacking anyone. It's 'a bloc'!

16:31 CEST
There are two Garmins in the move. Of course Pate is up there to help Dean, and that's a great combination.

16:32 CEST
Danilo Di Luca is moving up in the peloton, perhaps looking to contest the sprint today and steal some time bonus seconds on Menchov. He's only 26 seconds down on GC.

The leaders have just 2'45" now on the chasing pink jersey group... it will be down to the wire for the catch - if they make it!

16:34 CEST 162km/20km to go
Jonas Ljungblad is up in the break for Silence Lotto in his very easy to spot Swedish champion's jersey. Can't miss it with the huge yellow cross on the blue background.

16:35 CEST
We're still trying to see which team is bringing this gap down so quickly in the peloton. The breakaway is still rotating through, but perhaps not with the sense of urgency they may need to succeed.

16:36 CEST
Milram missed the move, as has Fuji. They each have one man up front in the chasing peloton followed by the Rabobank train.

16:37 CEST
The breakaway is heading up a little rise and now we can see the results of nearly three weeks of racing - tired legs and little splits starting to form.

16:39 CEST
Today's finish actually looks to be a nasty little uphill to the line, and we're remembering a magnificent solo effort launched in the Tour de Georgia by one Jason McCartney. He also won a stage of the Vuelta a Espana.

As if to validate our comments, McCartney marks a move by Grabovskyy and they have a little gap.

16:40 CEST
On another little roller, the break is shattering. Seeldraeyers is looking for help getting up to Masciarelli, who has gone across to the front group - which has swelled.

16:41 CEST
Actually, Masciarelli is back with Seeldraeyers.. The front group is 2'35 on the peloton, only a few seconds on some chasers. The two Columbia riders were caught out, as was our Cervelo man.

16:42 CEST
Both Saxo Bank men are up front, as is Pate.. a total of eight riders.

16:43 CEST
Cardenas is the man in red for Barloworld. The chasers are trying to take advantage of the motorcycles to get back on terms.